Councillors overturn building fee hike

SMITH

Bracebridge councillors have turned down the idea of increasing building fees.
The decision was made at a general committee meeting Feb. 14, after a report by chief building official Tom Hookings recommended a series of fee increases aimed at helping to offset rising costs faced by the building department.
Hookings said many of those costs are due to ongoing changes in the Ontario Building Code, which can translate into increased workloads for building department staff. He said most costs to the town stemming from the Building Code are payroll related.
As an example, Hookings pointed to the impact of one recent Building Code change in January, which requires many new buildings to be at least 80 per cent energy efficient.
“The new requirement will require greater documentation to be submitted with all applications, increasing the number of items which inspectors will have to review and inspect,” Hookings said in his report. “Staff will spend additional time working with the applicants and homeowners to ensure compliance with the new code requirements.”
The proposed fee increases for building permits ranged in scope from just a few dollars for docks to a $300 increase for septic system repair beds. Though Hookings said council could look into absorbing the costs through property tax revenues, he said fee hikes take into consideration the cost of “administration and enforcement of the Building Code Act.”
Council, however, was opposed to the idea, and defeated it by a vote of six to two.
Coun. Lori-Lynn Giaschi-Pacini felt raising the fees would inhibit developers and residents from contributing to the local construction economy in the near future.
“I am very aware and absolutely understand the need to recover costs by revenue generation from user fees, but also feel that there are times when increasing costs is not necessarily the best solution,” she said. “I feel the best solution is to keep the fees the way they are, with no increases.”
Giaschi-Pacini’s views were shared by Mayor Graydon Smith.
“One of the problems we’re running into, in looking at the bigger picture, is that the total cost to build a dwelling, whatever that dwelling is, continues to rise and rise and rise,” he said.
Coun. Mark Quemby, however, felt building fees aren’t the only factors that builders consider when decisions are made to begin construction projects.
“I don’t think that a fee increase is going to change the plans of a builder,” he said. “It’s the cost of materials that is the bigger concern … and whether or not these fees goes up, I don’t think they are going to make anyone decide not to build something.”